Exactly, said Notole, inside my head. D’Arnath was afraid of losing his power to those with more talent. And still we struggle with the results of his cowardice. We fight to be allowed to use our talents as we wish. The Prince has inherited immense powers from D’Arnath, but he uses them to keep us in bondage, fearful that we will outshine his own family.
And, of course, in all this learning that I was doing, I found out that there was more than one world. I was living in the world called Gondai, while Comigor, and all the people and places I had ever known, were in the other one-the mundane world, they called it.
That, of course, is why sorcery is such a great evil in your world, said Parven. It doesn’t belong there. D’Natheil and the followers of D’Arnath call our works evil, yet what could be a greater evil than introducing sorcery where it was not intended? Great injustices resulted from it; learn the history of the heir and Rebellion and you’ll understand.
At first I was sad and a little bit scared to think I wasn’t even in the same world where I had been born, but that feeling went away quickly. The Lords were teaching me so many new things, and besides, I almost couldn’t remember Comigor any more, or the faces of anyone I’d known there, except the dead ones-Papa and Lucy. Those I remembered very well.
The Lords answered any kind of question except one, and that was anything about themselves. I wondered about their masks and why they wore them. I wondered why Ziddari had lived in my world for so long, and why he served as Papa’s lieutenant, and why he had saved me, when he helped kill all the other evil sorcerers who lived there. When I asked those questions, I could feel the three of them with me, but no one answered. Just as well. My head was bulging with everything I was learning-and it was all so easy. I never forgot anything they taught me.
A week or so after my meeting with the Lords, Darzid came to my house. Well, of course he was Ziddari, but he looked like the ordinary Darzid again. “I have an urgent matter to discuss with you, my young Lord-one best talked about in person, I think, though you have adapted well to our new ‘arrangements.’ ” We were standing on the wide balcony outside my apartments. Like every window and door in the Gray House, the balcony looked out over the desert. “Our first skirmish with Prince D’Natheil is about to occur, and in order for you to play your part in it, you must learn one of those bits of hard truth of which I spoke.”
For just a moment, I glimpsed the light of rubies in his eyes. He was very excited, and that made me excited, too. I wanted to get on with the war, now I had committed myself to be a part of it. “Have you ever wondered how you happen to have the powers of a sorcerer?” he said.
“I thought it just happened when you were born.”
“Like green eyes or large stature or red hair?”
“Something like that.”
“Tell me, Gerick, how likely is it that a child has red hair and yet his mother has brown hair and his father black?”
“I don’t know. Not likely, I guess.”
“Then what if I were to tell you that it is far less likely that a boy is born with the powers you have to parents who have none, than it is for a black-haired child with dark brown skin to be born to parents that are blond and fair?”
My stomach tied itself into a knot, and my skin felt cold again, though it wasn’t even night. The red sun shone hot and bright on my skin. “Would it be true?”
“Yes.”
“Then that would mean that Papa or Mama was a sorcerer, too-”
“You know better than that.”
“-or that one of them, or both of them, were not my parents.”
Darzid leaned on the balcony rail and gazed out into the desert. “Tomas was far too powerful for your mother to amuse herself with other men. And I can tell you that while Tomas had women other than Philomena on occasion, none of them were Dar’Nethi.”
The knot pulled up everything so tight, I felt like there was a big hollow place in my stomach. “Then who am I?”
From the pocket of his black tunic, Darzid pulled a flat square of ivory. He put it in my hand. It had a looking glass set into it, and of course when I looked at it, my own face looked back at me. How could Papa not be my father? I could see him in my face. My chin was pointed like his. My hair was the same color, my eyes, too. And even darkened from the sun, my skin had the same red-gold cast. Nellia had said a thousand times how like Papa I was, and how no one but the children of Comigor had such coloring…
The mirror clattered to the floor, and I clasped my hands behind my back as if it had burned me. I wanted to be sick.
Darzid nodded. “You’ve guessed it then. A hard thing to discover that what you believed all your life was false.”
Seri. I was Seri’s child… and her sorcerer husband’s who had been burned alive.
“You and your cousin were born on the same day. Tomas’s son was born early, weak and sickly, like all Philomena’s children. There was no possibility he could survive. The serving sister who attended both mothers had overheard what was planned for the sorcerer’s child and tried to switch the two of you. I caught her at it and decided that it would be amusing to see what became of you. I made sure the nurse was sent to Comigor with you and would watch out for any sign that you had inherited your father’s… skills.”
“So the baby Papa killed…”
“… was his own son. He never knew it.”
“Was he cursed by Seri’s husband? Is that why he was born early?” Everything in the world was flipping upside down. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the sun had started rising right back up from where it was setting.
“Perhaps.”
I didn’t know what to think. Seri. Seri was my mother. I hated her because her Prince had killed Papa, and she had brought him to kill me and Lucy. But surely that meant she didn’t know the truth either. I tried to remember things about Seri, but everything was all blurry and confused. And the baby Papa killed hadn’t been a sorcerer. That changed… something… Before I could clear any of it up, Darzid tapped me hard on the cheek, calling me to pay attention.
“There’s more. Worse than what you have already heard.”
“I can’t see how it could be worse.”
“You should know your father’s name, don’t you think?”
“He was evil, and he’s dead. I don’t see why it matters except that he made me evil like him. I didn’t belong there. I shouldn’t have been born in that other world at all. And Papa… Tomas… was my real father.”
“Don’t be sentimental, Gerick. You were so afraid of Tomas that you stopped talking to him. He would have slit your throat or had you burned if he had even suspected what you are. But the identity of your father has everything to do with who you are, and what you are, and what you will be in the future, for there has come about something so unusual-even for this world that is so strange to you- that it would take days even to speculate on how it was done.”
“I don’t understand.” My head was spinning with hot and cold and red sunlight glaring in my eyes and his words that just would not stop telling me awful things.
“It’s in the names. The names will tell you. You see, Serf’s husband, your father, went by the name of Karon.”
“Karon? But that was the other name they called-”
“-the Prince D’Natheil. Yes, indeed. It appears that your real father is not dead at all, but has been brought back to life. He is now one and the same as our enemy.”
“I don’t understand how it could be possible.” Two different people… yet the same. A dead person come to life again.
“It is indeed an immense enchantment, worked by the old man you saw talking with Seri-the last gasp of a once-talented people. We will teach you all about it and what it means for your place in the world. But for now, you must be ready to face him.”
“Face him? The Prince?” I could not call him my father. I pictured the tall man who had walked with Seri in Grandmama’s garden and could not imagine how the Lords thought I could fight him.